


These Wings on Some Wheels

by romanticalgirl



Series: behind the song [15]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-14
Updated: 2013-04-14
Packaged: 2017-12-08 12:09:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/761151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romanticalgirl/pseuds/romanticalgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You ain't a beauty, but hey, you're all right.</p><p>Based on the Bruce Springsteen song "Thunder Road"</p>
            </blockquote>





	These Wings on Some Wheels

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted 6-7-08

Mary watches him from the porch when he thinks she’s doing other things. She keeps the radio on to distract her from the thrum of the engine when he revs it and she does her best not to look down the road at the way out of town, wondering if she’s waiting in vain or if there’s somewhere out there they can make it to one of these days.

He’s covered in grease nearly every time she sees him, dressed in old jeans and an even older t-shirt. They’re threadbare and the color’s not right for either of them – the jeans are almost white and the t-shirt’s a dingy gray – but they go with the smears of dirt and oil on his skin that make the dark hairs of his arms seem to stand out even more, and she wonders what they’d feel like beneath her palms, wonders what the back seat would feel like against her spine.

Some days she catches him coming home from work, covered in a different kind of grease, sludge and slime from the factory. His coveralls are always unzipped to his waist, sort of falling off his too-thin frame and she stares at the dark mop of his hair, clinging to his scalp where the band of his hard hat dug into his head and frizzed out like wayward curls at the back of his neck. 

She dances for him, on the porch, though she doesn’t think he watches, and she turns away the other boys that promise her things she’s supposed to want. Frankie offers her a little house that his parents own, scraping by to make the reduced rent on jobs that keep seeming to shrivel up and die away like the souls of the men in their neighborhood. Johnny promises her drinks and dancing until dawn, but his eyes are all women and sin and infidelity, and she imagines he’ll fade away before she’s ready but not before she’s tired of waiting. There are others and other offers, but she can’t quite hear them over the roar of the engine as he guns it, head tilted to the side like there’s something he’s not hearing like he should, and she wonders if he’s listening for her.

Some nights he sits on the hood of his Chevy, head bent over a second-hand guitar that he’s teaching himself how to play, ignoring the shouts of his father telling him to start acting like a man. Sometimes he’ll look up and stare at the porch and Mary thinks maybe he can see her staring back in the darkness. He looks her way and plays early Rolling Stones songs, singing just loud enough that she can’t quite hear the words, but she knows them all by heart anyway, so she sings along.

He’s there on the hood the night that she comes home from a date with Billy. She hasn’t quite stopped believing in the Chevy or in him, but she’s afraid she’ll forget to live if she keeps waiting, so she stops turning down offers and starts going out, coming home every night and seeing him there like he never moves at all. She wants to scream and shout at him, but instead she’s just cold as ice, pretending she doesn’t care, that she isn’t afraid that one day she’ll wake up and he’ll be gone. 

The dates always end, and she always sits in her window afterwards, saying Hail Marys on her rosary, recounting her sins as she watches him. There are new sins that he offers, if he would offer, and she wishes that he would. Until he does, she takes her sins where she can get them, sliding into another car, wishing every time that it was his.  
It’s raining the night it happens. A screen door slams with Roy Orbison fading in and out between the shouting. She runs to her own door, ignoring her mother and father as they tell her to come back to the table and finish her dinner. She doesn’t care about it as it grows cold, only cares as his engine grows hot, drowning out the rain and the shouting as lighting fills up the sky and somewhere down the line the thunder rolls. 

She grabs her coat off the hook and runs out onto the patio, letting the screen door slam behind her. The rain’s too thick to see through, though the streetlights offer smudges around the dark shadows and shapes lurking. Steam rolls off the hood and she runs barefoot through the brittle grass, gasping in the cold of the summer storm. 

The passenger door is open and she slides in, slamming it shut behind her. He doesn’t say a word as he peels out of the driveway, sparking up oil and mud and water. The car fishtails as he jerks the wheel to the side and they sway all over the road on the way into town. He reaches over and grabs her hand, offering her a smile and a shrug as he pushes the pedal harder to the floor. He run a red light and there’s a welcome sign in the rearview mirror as they drive on, holding on to each other tight, looking for somewhere, anywhere, better than here.


End file.
